“Ancient Secrets Revealed: 9,000-Year-Old City Near Jerusalem Challenges Everything We Knew About Early Civilization!”
Co-director of the Motza excavations, Jacob Vardi, claimed the knowledge gathered from this discovery gives archaeologists their “Big Bang” moment regarding this particular stage of human history.
“It’s a game changer, a site that will drastically shift what we know about the Neolithic era,” said Vardi.
Yaniv Berman, Israel Antiquities AuthorityThe Israel Antiquities Authority asked to survey the area before a highway was built atop, which is when this priceless settlement was discovered.
The research team estimated a population between 2,000 and 3,000 people once lived in the settlement — “an order of magnitude that parallels a present-day city,” the team said.
Spanning dozens of acres, the town sits about three miles northwest of the center of Jerusalem. According to The Times Of Israel, most experts thought the area was uninhabited during this particular prehistoric period — until just recently.
“So far, it was believed that the Judea area was empty, and that sites of that size existed only on the other bank of the Jordan river, or in the Northern Levant,” a joint statement by Vardi and archaeologist Hamoudi Khalaily read.
“Instead of an uninhabited area from that period, we have found a complex site, where varied economic means of subsistence existed, and all this only several dozens of centimeters below the surface.”
Yaniv Berman, Israel Antiquities AuthorityDr. Hamoudi Khalaily (left) and Dr. Jacob Vardi (right) at the Motza site. The team plans on publishing several papers on the discovery for the public, and installing some of the artifacts in museums.
For Lauren Davis, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the site is a wealth of contextual data — and one that will reap priceless rewards yet unknown.
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